Kingdom Business with Teams

It’s said that if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go further, go together.

When I first considered bringing my faith into the workplace, I assumed it was a personal journey, not a collective one. As someone inclined to please others, I was hypersensitive to the perception that I might be imposing my beliefs on my colleagues. Over time, I realized this “sensitivity” was more about my fear of man than about my loving heart.

My first team experience of Business as a Ministry came when we launched an employee emergency fund. We had just opened a call center, which, for the first time in our company history, involved working with noncollege-educated teammates who faced some visible life challenges. (Note: In introducing a chaplaincy program, we would learn, through depersonalized reports, that our college-educated team members shared many of the same challenges.)

Initially, my business partner, Jonathan, and I set aside $5,000 for the fund, deciding to manage it based on a few loose criteria. (We believed the money would be gone in a day if we didn’t personally oversee it.)

After announcing the fund to our leadership team, one of the leaders approached us a few weeks later with a request. A call center team member was struggling to get to work due to her car’s failing transmission.

To Jonathan and me, the solution seemed simple: We could ask her to get a few estimates and then grant her the money to fix her car. However, in a decision I don’t fully recall, we empowered our leadership team to manage the program, and that’s when I saw the real opportunity to change lives.

By allowing our team to decide who would benefit from this assistance, we transformed a top-down handout into a culture-building, rally-around experience. Our team simply knew things we didn’t—that this employee had several inoperable cars at home. Through relationships and conversations, they discovered she was caught in a cycle of buying cheap cars that quickly broke down and weren’t worth repairing. As a result, she would purchase another barely operable vehicle, throwing good money after bad.

Gradually, other team members offered practical solutions, not just financial aid, to help with her underlying problem. One member knew of a nonprofit nearby, Second Chances Garage, which provided reduced-cost repairs and low-cost, reconditioned vehicles.

This resource was a lifesaver for our employee, allowing her to get back on the road with reliable transportation, and it required less than $1,000 in costs from the fund.

Beyond the practical solution and cost savings, the true blessing of empowering our team in this “ministry” was the impact on our company culture.

Three key outcomes emerged:

• Improved Morale: The initiative boosted team spirit in ways that a food truck or pinball machine never could.
• Increased Compassion: It heightened genuine care and empathy among team members (which I would argue also increased accountability).
• Clarified Purpose: It highlighted the greater “why” behind our business.

I heard that tears were shed when our team presented the employee with a solution for reliable transportation. I also understand that one team member asked and was able to pray with her.

Most wonderfully, this was the day my faith-at-work journey transitioned from a personal one to one in which, as my church says, “everyone is welcome, no one is perfect, and anything is possible.”

Living the Christian life at work is great, but it’s just the beginning. Through the Great Commission, Jesus calls us to be disciple makers, not one-man Jesus bands. While we can’t control our team members coming to Christ, we can create opportunities for them to experience what his Kingdom is about.

The Kingdom Culture Field Guide is designed as a tool to empower Christian CEOs and business owners to collaborate with God and their teams, Christian or not, on the journey of building a “great business for a greater purpose.”